


Leisure Redefined

by devilinthedetails



Series: Free Spirit [3]
Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Courage, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, leisure time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25753120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Lianne and her shattered, shifting definitions of leisure time.
Series: Free Spirit [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1864777
Kudos: 8





	Leisure Redefined

Leisure Redefined

When Lianne was a child, she associated the royal nursery with leisure time. It was where she played with her brothers Liam and Jasson after her governess and tutors had finished torturing her with academic and etiquette lessons for the day. It was where she wished on the first star she saw every night—a wish she knew would come true because her nursemaids promised with hands over heart that wishes attached to stars always did. It was where she was tucked into bed and where she didn’t have to fear any monsters that might lurk in the dark because monsters weren’t supposed to reach the nursery. 

The nursery floated high up in the clouds at the top of a tall, twisting tower, and Lianne always felt like a fairy tale princess inside it. The tower’s circle staircase spiraled steeply upward, a design intended to ensure that defending soldiers enjoyed the advantage of height against any attacker and had a long way to fall back before reaching the top of the tower they guarded. It was built to keep mortal enemies out, but it couldn’t protect against immortal invaders. 

Lianne’s leisure time in her nursery was shattered with the screams of her nursemaids as hurrocks—vicious winged horses that had been banished from the Mortal Realms long ago and should have remained outcasts for a hundred more years—swept into the nursery, breaking the glass windows into shards beyond counting and repair. Monsters had entered her place of refuge not from the ground below but from the air above and around her. 

She felt dizzy as all the blood inside her seemed to race to her head. A nursemaid shoved Lianne under her bed before falling to a deep cut from a hurrock’s claw. Lianne would have screamed at the sight of her nursemaid’s blood seeping scarlet into the carpet if her lips weren’t numb and every instinct inside her wasn’t wailing that to scream would be to give her location away to the savage creatures now swarming the sentries who had rushed into the nursery to defend her and her brothers from an assault that had already come. 

Two more swipes of steely hurrock claw claimed two more soldiers, and a third collapsed when a hurrock’s fang tore into his neck. As the soldier whose neck had been ripped by the hurrock fang dropped to the floor, his fingers released his spear. 

Liam, who spent hours of his leisure time escaping to watch soldiers practice and mimicked their drills whenever a weapon was placed into his hands, emerged from the cover of a nightstand to seize the spear the soldier had relinquished in death. 

He spun the spear with more energy and desperation than technique, but somehow the sight of her brother fighting back lit a fire in Lianne’s veins. It was a selfish flame. A burning desire to save her own life. A dangerous, searing heat produced because she was trapped with her back against the wall but determined to defy the odds and survive. 

She fumbled beneath the bed, finding a stack of shoes, which she began to hurl at the hurrocks. Most of the shoes missed their targets, but at least distracted the hurrocks from Liam. Her efforts seemed to have inspired Jasson, who had hidden beneath another bed. From under the bed, he tossed book after heavy book from the pile he was always reading because he was a nasty know-it-all who filled his free time with studying. 

Lianne didn’t know how long her stockpile of shoes and Jasson’s supply of books could last against the hurrocks, and fortunately, she never had to discover this. Lord Wyldon of Cavall, training master to the pages and squires, burst into the nursery with his sword drawn. His blade flashing like lightning, he proved why he was entrusted with raising the realm’s next generation of warriors. 

The flailing claws of the hurrocks tore skin from his arm and his face, but he didn’t flinch or retreat. He slayed them all before reinforcements could arrive, and Lianne realized that she had become the fabled princess in the tower who needed to be rescued by the brave hero, the mythical knight armed with chivalry and honor. 

Afterward, the screams of her nursemaids, the shattering of glass, the torn flesh, and the smell of blood would haunt her memories and dog her dreams, transforming them into nightmares that left her breathless and crying into her pillow. 

In her leisure time, she tried to discuss the attack with her brothers—to discover if they were as shaken inside by it as she was—but when she asked if they had been afraid of the hurrocks, Liam only scoffed that nothing scared him and Jasson only told her tartly that it was a mark of a fool to worry about the past instead of the present and future. 

Kally was volunteering in the infirmary, Roald was focused on his page training, Vania was too young to understand anything other than baby babble, and Mama was off fighting more of the horrible immortals, so it was into her father’s strong shoulder that Lianne found herself sobbing. 

“Let it all out, my dear.” Papa patted her back as she related a scattered, tearful account of everything she had seen in the nursery when the hurrocks attacked. “Cry your eyes out if you have to, and you’ll find you feel better.” 

“Liam and Jasson aren’t crying.” Lianne’s sob turned into a hiccup as her lungs spasmed. 

“That’s because they’re boys.” Papa stroked her hair soothingly. “Boys stupidly believe they should never cry. Girls are much smarter and honest in that way.” 

“Boys don’t cry but kings and father do.” Lianne felt a strange swelling of pride even as she sniffled. She remembered how her father had arrived in the nursery with a bristling contingent of guards after Lord Wyldon had killed the last hurrock. There had been tears in his eyes then. 

He had hugged her, Liam, and Jasson so tightly to his chest that she had thought their three heads might be smashed together into one goopy mess of brains. Liam and Jasson had twisted away from his embrace, but she had lingered between her father’s arms, trying to melt into the rhythm of his beating heart—trying to feel safe as she heard it echoing in her ears like waves in a seashell. He had been scared then, she thought, worried that she and her brothers could have died when the hurrocks invaded their nursery. 

“Fathers should cry for their children sometimes and kings for their people.” Papa kissed her forehead and dried her eyes with his handkerchief. “Otherwise, they would not be good fathers or good kings.” 

Lianne couldn’t puzzle out what he meant by that, but that didn’t stop her from lifting her nose to smugly proclaim as if the matter was settled beyond question or dispute, “If fathers and kings can cry, so can their daughters.” 

Years later, when she had seen the blood of many battles and was no longer a hapless princess in a tower who needed a knight to rescue her from winged monsters, she redefined the meaning of leisure time in a meadow with Alan. Her Rider Group had met up with the Own, whose Knight Commander Alan was serving as squire. 

Under a blazing summer sun, they sprawled on a green bed of grass, fingers flicking through the soft, bowing blades as they talked. 

“If I ask you a question, will you answer me true?” Through the bright sunlight, Lianne squinted at Alan. 

“Depends on the question.” Alan gave a noncommittal shrug. 

Lianne rolled her eyes but asked anyway. “What would you do if you had all the leisure time in the world?” 

“Lord Raoul gives me plenty of leisure time.” Alan’s fingers brushed through the grass. “I can’t complain.” 

“That’s not just failing to answer true.” Reproachfully, Lianne nudged him. “That’s failing to answer at all.” 

“Oh, very well.” Alan grinned at her, and her heart skipped a beat to the tune of some wild music it could only hear when Alan was around her. “If I had all the leisure time in the world, I’d spend every moment of my life with you.” 

“Here’s a dandelion.” Lianne plucked one from a cluster beside her and tickled Alan’s chin with it. “If you blow on a dandelion, close your eyes, and make a wish, your wish will come true. Close your eyes and wish for all the leisure time in the world so you can spend every moment of your life with me.” 

Alan obeyed, shutting his eyes and blowing on the dandelion. Lianne watched the dust of the dandelion, their wish for a life together, and their leisure time drift away in the summer breeze.


End file.
